24. Business as a Ministry: The Ultimate Success with Brandon M. West

In this conversation, Vona welcomes Brandon West to Courageous Retirement, where they discuss the paths of faith and career and how we can use our work as a ministry. 

Touching on themes of legacy, purpose, and the true definition of success and failure, Brandon shares a lesson on taking risks he learned from David Green, the CEO of Hobby Lobby, and a heartfelt discussion about the struggles of positioning his business as a ministry. 

Sharing impactful stories and quotes, they explore the concept of success as being faithful rather than outcome-based and the eternal significance of our daily actions. Brandon provides insights on how to live authentically as a Christian in all areas of life, emphasizing the impactful intersection of broken heart, opportunity, and skill. 

This episode comforts us by reminding us of God's plans and the crucial role of faith and integrity in our lives. It reassures us that we're not alone in this journey and that our faith can guide us through the uncertainties of retirement.

00:00 Introduction and Divine Encounters
02:24 Resonating with Brandon's Work
04:00 Understanding Legacy and Identity
06:12 Purpose and Passion in Business
08:34 Personal Faith Journeys
12:16 Redefining Success and Failure
26:00 Facing Fear and Embracing Courage
28:13 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Quotes from the show: 
 "We spend half of our lives trying to understand our identity, our gifts, and," she said, "we spend the other half of our life, surrendering it." Brandon, quoting his counselor.  

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."  Mark Twain quote shared by Brandon

 "Purpose is found at the intersection of a broken heart opportunity and skill." Brandon West

 "In business, we take risks every single day. Why would we not take a risk for something that could have an internal impact?" Brandon quoting David Green

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin D. Roosevelt quote referenced by Vona from the book, 'Becoming Madam Secretary' by Stephanie Dray

Scriptures Referenced:
“I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Gardener. He lops off every branch that doesn’t produce. And he prunes those branches that bear fruit for even larger crops. He has already tended you by pruning you back for greater strength and usefulness by means of the commands I gave you. Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can’t produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me." John 15: 1-4

"Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you. You will suffer for ten days. But if you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life." 
Revelation 2:10

Learn more about Brandon at https://brandonmichaelwest.com or www.PHOScreative.com

Purchase Brandon's book: https://amzn.to/3FAEM9A

Thank you for stopping by today! Remember to Engage Your Faith and Live Your More as you reap the benefits of Courageous Retirement!

To watch the video, check out my YouTube Channel!

Learn more about the show, author Vona Johnson, and more at CourageousRetirement.com!

Schedule a free 15 minute Your Path to More call with Vona.

Transcript

0:00

Do you think of your work as a ministry? Whether you are near retirement or already retired, today's conversation is going to give you a different perspective on the work that you do. My guest, Brandon West, has a beautiful philosophy about success and failure, and will give you all kinds of tips on how you can live your life and do the work that God's called you to for ultimate success. Be sure and stick around to the very end where Brandon shares his favorite scripture and why he uses that scripture to lead him and his business and industry. I hope you'll join us for this really amazing conversation.

Vona Johnson: 0:44

Do you fear? What lies beyond retirement? What if it's a gateway to a life filled with purpose, meaning, and adventure rather than an end? Discover peace and fulfillment as you boldly enter this new chapter in Courageous Retirement, a Christian podcast. I'm your host, author, and coach Vona Johnson. Let's get started. I resonate so much with the work that you're doing, Brandon, and wanted to have you come and, and talk to us here at Courageous Retirement about how retirement. We all think about the end game and all the things that we're gonna do or maybe not gonna do when we get there. But I think that there's a really a crucial step before we walk out that door of that career that we've been working at our lives. That we, we leave our legacy right where we are. And honestly, if God's involved in the discussion, we may not leave as early as we think we do because we'll realize that we have a lot more work to do before we leave. So I just, everything you were talking about that day really resonated with me. So I just am so grateful that you are here and spending this time with us, and I'm excited to, to see where he is gonna lead this conversation. So welcome Brandon. How are you? Yeah.

Brandon West: 1:57

Absolutely. Yeah. Really excited to, to be with you. It was a joy and a delight to meet you at the conference, and, uh, excited to explore some of those things in a, in a very new way, even for me. And so I look forward to my. My older self, 20 years from now watching this same video and going, what has been eternally true in my convictions throughout life? Like, what is still true? So this is a blast and uh, it's gonna be a joy for my future self to review as well. I. Oh, I love that idea of what, of your future self listening to this someday. And you know, when we talk about legacy, we get so wrapped up in the idea of what are we gonna leave our children? And I literally, the most recent episode of this show. I had a conversation with a gentleman who, wants to, he gave all kinds of really great advice on people on how to write down their story. So even if, even if it's never published, the family gets the opportunity to hear our voice. After we're gone and, and be able to smile about those stories. But he just has techniques on how to pull those out. And, and, and that's important, but I don't think we often think about our workplace, the place that God has placed us for the better part of our lives and how we, how we can make an impact. And, and I will tell you the thing that probably rung. so true to me. The most about what you were talking about, and you have a book about this, I believe, but is that our business isn't really our business. And I don't know that those are exactly your words, but that was such an eyeopening statement for me, because we do make our business all about us and all of the success that we're gonna have in life and success in God's economy is entirely different. Right. Yeah. That is so good. Yeah, I think that that is the truth that we spend most of our lives trying to truly unravel and embrace. Uh, I was hanging out with my, my counselor back in in December, and she gave me this great line. She said, we spend half of our lives trying to understand our identity, our gifts, and she said, we spend the other half. Of our life, surrendering it. It's like we chase so hard, like who am I? Who have I been created to be like, what are my gifts? What are my passion? What's my, and then we actually spend the rest of just releasing that, going, actually, I am something so much more than that. Like I am, I'm, I'm a son, I'm a daughter, I'm a disciple, I'm an evangelist, I'm a minister, and I can bring that to every context of my life. Like you mentioned with legacy. My, my big passion in life is helping businesses, business leaders, to embrace this idea that, uh, we don't have to waste our business just on business. When we spend all of our energy and resources on profit and loss statements and graphs that go up into the right and like all of those things just become a distraction actually to this one thing of, of. Ministry in the marketplace and people wanna ask about what does it look like to be a Christian and be a leader, and how do I do those two things like. Well, actually we're just living, authentically from our identity, that's what it looks like to be a Christian at business. That's what it looks like to be a Christian at church. Also, like it looks, looks like to be a Christian at Publix, like, like in the marketplace, like wherever. We're just living outta that identity and going like, God, just use me in those places. And you do such a good job of, of like focusing and helping people understand like you've been uniquely crafted and created for this specific mission and. It's so fun for people to just go, like, I, I think it was Mark Twain who said that there's two most important days in a man's life, the day that they were born, and the day they figure out why the day they were born, and the day they figure out why, why were you created? What, what were you created for? One of my favorite frameworks, one author writes and says that purpose is found at the intersection of a broken heart, opportunity, and skill. Purpose is found at the intersection of a broken heart opportunity and skill. And so he just asks, what breaks your heart? Like what brokenness in the world makes you go, I wish that I could have an impact on this. Where's their opportunity? You look around and you see those things, and then where's their skill? Where you're like, well, actually. I think I, I, I love this. I'm passionate about this. What if I brought this to this problem and to this brokenness? And right in the middle of those things is a purpose that all of them have been created for. And all of us are so different in that that's what's so beautiful about it. And then the, the whole church, the Bride of Christ holds those things with open hands, walks towards brokenness and the gospel goes forth. Oh gosh. There's a lot of good stuff in the, what you just went through there. My mind's just like. I gotta see if we can unravel some of that. No, that is so good. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about, um, I grew up in the church and then wandered away. It's all in the book. We're not gonna go into all that now, but I wandered away and ended up. A single college student expecting a baby. And that was the most amazing gift that God could have given me at that mm-hmm. Era of my life. I needed that. And I've often said my husband would've never married me had he known the girl I was before I had that baby. Um, but the point of that is that. When we, when we met and I came back to the church in our relationship and started, you know, bible studies and, and just strengthening faith. I didn't, you know, it's like I've always believed, but it didn't have the relationship. And what I love is that God was using me in the workplace. Before I was aware that that's how he did things. You know, I mean, we can talk about intentionally being there and, and being that voice of calm or that comfort or leadership or whatever, and we can do all of that out of who we are and whose we are without consciously even realizing that that's what he's doing. And, and that's a gift, right? Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Who we are. And who's we are. That's, that's fantastic. Two great words there, just to point to identity. Yeah. And I, you know, it's because I, I talk about in my book too, my identity and, and I wrapped it up in how I needed to be, right. I needed to be that person that could help people. But being right was really important to me, and it still is. I struggle with that. When you started out talking about surrender, one of the things that I had to surrender was not just being right. I. But making sure that you knew that I was right. Um, well, I, I think there's so many things that we tie our identity to, and when we tie our identity to anything that we can potentially lose, we will live in constant fear because. I if I don't have this thing I've tied my day to, and I, if I lose it, I'm, I'm nobody. And so the book, the book that I wrote a year ago was called, it's Not Your Business to Succeed, it Is Not Your Business To Succeed. Yeah. And it's stolen from a quote, uh, from CS Lewis' letters to Malcolm, in which he writes his friend and he says. It is not your business to succeed only to do what is right and then to entrust the results to a faithful God for each of us. Like we love to tie our identity, sense of worth to things outside of us. I love to tie that to when I win an award, when folks wins an award, when we reach new milestones, when graphs, uh, are, are projecting all kinds of top line growth. And profit and all those, and I'm like, I'm a great leader. I'm, you know, look at, you know, and then when those things are, I'm like, who am I? I am so broken, I'm such a loser. You know? And it's like we just constantly go on this rollercoaster and, and if we could just like grab onto who God says we are, what, what God says, a definition of success is maybe we, we would take that sine wave with these huge amplitudes and just re reduce it for a minute and live more in this constant state of like, I know I'm a nobody. That's okay. I embrace that like. God makes me something. And when I'm faithful to the Lord, like he, he's with me regardless of what my, my graphs say about my results in life. And if we can move away from that outcome-based mindset, man, does that put us in a better place to embrace the words we're all chasing, which is well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master. Yeah. You know, um he had to teach me that lesson in a really hard way. Mm-hmm. Because when I retired. Eight years ago, man, I was, I was gonna be, you know, this amazing author million books sold, I was gonna be a million dollar coach, and I was gonna change everybody's life by just spending time with them and showing them how they first, just how they could be healthy. Then I realized that nobody really, really wanted that because if they, you know. They would've already done it if they were going to. So one more drop in that bucket wasn't going anywhere. And I love, we won't go into all the details, but I love how God showed me that what he really wanted me to help people with was to live out their faith. Mm-hmm. So I, I shifted and I started doing all these things and I, you know, I, I've hired so many coaches and I've invested in so many programs and I've tried so many things and none of it has taken off. And it wasn't until I was a failure and I turned to God and pleaded with him and just tore into the word and just soaked it up That he helped me realize that he had to take me. He has to take me,'cause I'm not through the other side yet, but I don't even care. I've done what you've said. I've let go of that outcome because I know that he has provided everything I need. I can get outta bed every morning and I don't have to do anything. I get to do what he asked me to do that day. This day. Yeah. And, and that is more priceless than the million books I could have sold or the million dollars I could have made as a coach or anything. I don't know that when we hang up this, I might get a phone call that somebody says, I wanna hire you for a million dollars to go do this. I don't know that that's not gonna happen. And then I don't, it doesn't matter. I don't, I don't need to think about that anymore. I just need to think about what am I gonna do today that. Will touch somebody's life that will make a difference in the person that he brings to me. I don't even have to go looking for him anymore, which is a huge relief because he, you know, I mean, not that I can stay home all the time, which would be kind of cool, but, right. Well, this, this is what's so fun about a podcast like this about courageous retirement. I don't know that stage of life yet, but I think prior to whatever form of retirement we take in life, we suffer from this outcome-based mindset. But I remember when I read a blog post by Faith Driven Entrepreneur and it was entitled the Day after I Sold My Business, and I just, I remember reading through this and going. What do you do the morning after you sell your business? Like, who are you? Like, has that changed at all? Like, what do you do in life? Like, you're not the C, you're not the owner, you're not the, and I think it began to check in me this, this later stage life question of not, not just how do we define success? But an additional question of like, how do we define failure? Yeah, because you, you, you said like you had to hit this place where you're like, you know, I feel like a failure. I wonder like I. How the Lord would ever use that term. Like how would, to whom would Jesus apply that term? And I think about the psalmist, like there, the psalmist had fear of failure, but not like, man, that I would, I failed to defeat this army. I'm a failure, I fail. It was, it was this fear over moral and character failure. So like, what if, what if our definition of success wasn't just about outcomes, it was about faithfulness. I am successful if I'm just faithful regardless of whether or not my outcomes produce what I want. That's the definition of success. But then how would we define failure? Failure is not, I failed to get this outcome. I failed to do this thing. I failed to produce this thing, but instead, I, I, I failed to, to be something like that's what the psalmist was concerned about. God protect my integrity. Keep my mouth from lying lips. Like if I could just walk in integrity and character, then maybe the Lord would say over my life, regardless of what my results for how many books we sold, how many stages we got on, like well done, good and faithful servant. That's just a whole different definition. Not only success, but a failure. You know, I'm going to walk through this doorway. This is something that the Lord has. Been just bringing me through and I'm not on completely on the other side, but I literally laid in bed this morning thinking about this and I. All of the, the conversations, and I don't even know if we can call'em conversations anymore, but the discussion about, you know, who, which political party's right? Who you know who, which one's the Nazi? I, I dunno. You know, and I mean just all of this bickering back and forth and the just oozing with hatred and. Just, ah, and I said to my daughter-in-law last night, um, I was like, oh, did you watch, did you should, you know, listen to this or whatever. And she's like, you know what? We haven't had any politics in our house all week. And I said, you know, for me, it's almost like a car accident. I can't look away. And I'm, I'm the person who doesn't watch the news, but I just can't look away from it all. And it occurred to me. I watched a movie, the Last Rifleman recently, and it was a story about a man who was at Normandy. He was an Irishman who fought in the British army and had always intended to go back to Normandy every year on D-Day and never made it. Well, his wife had just recently passed. Have you seen this before? I explain it all his wife had recently passed and so he decided this, this is the year I'm gonna do it and I won't give it all away, but there was a line in that movie that just blew me away. He was on the bus and he was talking to a man from Germany. He didn't wanna like this guy because he knew that this guy, he, he fought for the Ss and the guy told about, you know, how he was a young man and he was inscripted into the army and all of these things. And I don't remember exactly what was said, before, but the, the German said, you know, it was really shocking when I found out that we lost the war. And it was even more shocking when I found out I was on the wrong side. And someday, either me or someone I love is gonna come to that awareness. And the crazy thing about it is both of us could be sitting side by side in church thinking that the other one is on the wrong side. We're forgetting that the only side to be on is God. God wins. When it's all done, he wins. But what if this is a test? To see if we walk in integrity. If we can live out our lives as good Christians and be kind to one another, whether we agree or not, whether we see the issues of the world today from the same perspective or not, what if it's just a test to see if we can just love that other person anyway? That's so good. That's, I think, I think you're hitting it right on the head because I think that there's a lot of people in today's world that. The news, Google social media would label a great success, and yet the the father will say over them, depart from me, you, worker of lawlessness. I never knew you. And it's like, am I a success in life if I go and sell my company tomorrow for like a 10 x ebitda? Uh, and then I walk home that night and yell at my wife? Am I a success in life when I, when I walk away with the, like, number one in the world trophy, but I failed to disciple my sons that night. Like, what is success? Like, I wanna be found on, on the side of what the psalmist would say, like, yeah, faithfulness. A righteousness that comes from outside of me. A, a life submitted to the Lord. I am so far, I think about, uh, John Newton. He says, I, I'm not the man that I wish that I was. I'm not the man that I hope to be, and yet by God's grace, I am not what I once was. And it's like, that's just a journey, you know? Right. It's just like. Hey, God, how I'm gonna be faithful in that journey?'cause you, you keep me, you keep me, Lord, I don't even keep myself, you, you keep me and you keep him whose heart is fixed on you. Like I, that's all I wanna do. Just help me say fixed on you. Help me do, abide in you. So I was on a, I was on a podcast the other day and the first question they asked me was, um, who, who are you? I was like, oh gosh, here we go. You know? And, and I, I gave the best answer I could and after reading my book, she goes, I thought what you were gonna say was, I'm just a branch. And I decided in that moment, that's how I'm gonna answer that. For no one, who are you? I'm just a branch. I, we are, we are just branches like John 15 hanging onto a vine, hanging onto a vine, the vine dresser, doing its work like and just abiding in this vine. I'm just a branch. Staying right there and asking God, do something fruitful. With the least fruitful person. I, I, I know. And, and do something far beyond ever could. I'm just gonna be faithful to stay. Well, and, and the other, the next part of that though, I mean, I, all of that is true, but the, the part of it is when, when the judgment day comes, I'm not gonna be accountable for what you've said or did. I'm only gonna be accountable for what I said or did. And the beautiful thing is it doesn't matter. I can, I can do all of those things you listed that would take me away from the Lord. And all I really have to do is earnestly ask him to forgive me and he will. But he, not only will he forgive me, but he's gonna forgive that person that's sitting beside me in the church. That might be on the, the wrong side if they just, but ask. But if we don't show them. Him if we don't introduce them to that real relationship and that real opportunity for mercy. Have we done our job? Not that we need. Not that we have to, but don't we want to? That's so good. That's so good. And that. Can we not ask the same question in business as well? I was on a call with David Green, the CEO of, hobby Lobby. Cool. And describing, and I'm talking to a guy who talked to David Green. Wow. I'm just, I'm just like one of many people on this podcast going, like, raising my hand. Hope I can ask him a question. Cool. And, and we were talking about, Like risks in business and business as a ministry. And what about the risk that provides to the company? And he told a story about a time where one of his C-suite executives on the risk side came into his office. I. And said, you know, Hey, I just heard about this thing that we're doing. How could we do this? Like, what a risk you are presenting to this business. Oh my good. Why are we doing this? And David had turned and said, let me, lemme tell you a story. And he talked about a woman who recently was Hindu, Buddhist, something like that. And she had dietary restrictions and so they're catering for hundreds of people, but they, they brought in an extra catered lunch just for this woman. Like, Hey, we wanna honor you. Thank you so much for being on our team. And every lunch, they would just bring in a new one just for her, just just for her each time. And he said that after months of just being shown this kind of love and care, this woman winds up converting, accepting Christ, surrendering her life to Jesus. And as he's telling this story to this executive in his office, the executive is like weeping. And, and David just said, look. In business, we take risks every single day. Why would we not take a risk? For something that could have an internal impact. Would we be willing to take all these business risks over here, but not be willing to take a risk over here on something that that could actually change someone's life for the gospel and eternity? And with tears in his eyes? This executive left his office and he said he never walked back in my office ever again. That's so powerful. Yes, yes. Yeah. But, but we, we can be afraid. Right? I'm listening to, uh, an amazing book and we won't go into all of that, but it reminded me that,, all we have to fear, I mean, first of all, the Bible tells us fear not 365 times. That's not a coincidence. But really all we have to fear is fear itself, right. We should not be afraid. When God gives us that nudge and He, he tells us to go talk to that person or to go take that new job or whatever it is, or go retire. We have nothing to fear because we know that he's gonna take care of us. So, yeah. Yeah, I, yeah. Fear is such a real thing. It is. I remember when we went through our first. Like real big, pushback in the public about our positioning as business as a ministry. And, this woman posting videos on the internet. Lying about us, our position calling the mayor, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, all these different things. And it was this question for me, will I remain faithful to our commitment to business as a ministry given that we're getting pushback in the public? Like, I'm fearful. I'm wondering like, am I about to wake up and get like. You know, court order summons every single morning, struggling with anxiety, you know, 8:00 AM in my Bible, praying, feeling peace, not, uh, 10:00 AM sitting here at my desk having anxiety attacks and struggling to breathe and, and every day just this roller coaster of trusting in God and struggling with this, and fear being so real. And I just thought, here are my options. Here are my options. Shut my mouth and don't say anything for the gospel. Or keep opening my mouth, remain faithful and come what may? And I was like, well, the first one's actually not an option. Like I. The, it's not an option for us to just remain silent and, and not say anything and like bring Christ into our conversations, into our relationships, into the marketplace, like in, into our family. Like it's not an option. Like we're, we're called to open our mouth and so it was this season of learning to surrender over and over and say, Hey, God, like over overcome my, my fear and help me be courageous. Yeah. Every, every day, my prayer is, Lord, give me wisdom, give me discernment, and give me the courage to do what you're asking me to do today. So that might be a, a nice place to ease into, wrapping this conversation up. And, and I would like to do that by giving you the opportunity, first of all, if there's someone listening today, they're like, you know, I kind of like this dude how can I learn more? How, how could somebody find you if they wanted to hear more about you or read your book or, or whatever. What's the best path? Yeah, I'd love to connect on LinkedIn. Brandon, Michael West on LinkedIn. I post a lot of content there talking about leadership, talking about. Culture purpose, how we lead from that place. But I've also got my own website, Brandon Michael west.com. BrandonMichaelwest.com, and then my agency that, that we, that we have, that I get to run and got a team of 24 people in Gainesville helping businesses. It's called PHOS Creative, PHOS, PHOS Creative. PHOS is the Greek word for light. And, uh, our website is PHOScreative.com. So maybe three different options there for, for connecting. I will put those in the show notes. Thank you for that. So we've talked about a lot of things. We've kind of covered a lot of different bases today. Is there anything that you think, like when we, when we talk about this success what's the last message? If, if somebody only got this from you, what would that be? What would you want them to be? Yeah. Revelation 2:10 is one of my favorite verses. It ends with this beautiful call that for those who are faithful unto death, this is Jesus' promise. To those who are faithful unto death, I will give you a crown of life. Front of my book has a crown on it, and people are like, I, it's kind of faded in the background. I can't really see it all that well. Why is this there? It's not your business to succeed. There's a crown. And I was like, well, yeah, actually what, what we're doing as we surrender, it's not my business to succeed. We're chasing something very different in which it's a crown, not in this world. It's a crown in the next one to come and to the faithful person who's chasing that out. They take every moment of success in this world to try and turn it into a gospel opportunity. I win an award, great. I get to be on stage. I get to share about Christ, Hey, I just got this, this cool nominate. I get to go hang out with these people and tell them about Jesus and, and when people ask me like, Hey Brandon, how can I pray for you? I'm just like, help. Would you just pray that in every place that I am, I could be faithful to share the message of Christ and I. I think for us, we're, we're doing that because we know that that verse in revelation is true for those who are are faithful unto death. I'll give you a crown of life, and what's so beautiful is all these different crowns that we'll receive from Christ at the end of our life, we'll actually just as soon as we put'em on our head. It says that we'll actually just take him back off and we'll lay them at the foot of, of Jesus, our Savior, and we'll crown him, king of all kings. And so that's, that's what I'm trying to live for. And in the middle of all that I. Trying to live with as much humility as possible and just go, I am, I am not who I have been called to be. Um, but by the grace of God, I, I'm not who I once was and I'm just gonna keep walking down that line as faithfully as possible. Knowing that it life's gonna be a rollercoaster, but trying to say, Hey, God, if I just surrender this, this pursuit of success and outcomes and results and just go, it's about faithfulness. Then maybe by your grace you could help me live there on a daily basis. Oh, that's, that's very beautiful and I feel like you are living that out really well. What you're reminding me of is both the verse in Daniel as well as the song, and that is, even if. Even if all of the dreams and desires he has put on my heart don't come true. If the healing that I think my husband should have or the, you know, whatever. I mean all the things that we think we want, even if that doesn't come to be, I'm going to trust him and I'm going to know I'm gonna be there at the end. Right. So Beautiful. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Well, you know, I could do this for a long, long time, but we may have to, we may have to connect again sometime. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been a blast. Thank you

30:25

that was really a great session, wasn't it? It's just a beautiful reminder that God can use us wherever we are, whether we're still in the workplace or not. When we hit this season, what I call the best season, God can use us and it's not about the identity we create for ourselves around our workplace. It's about leaning into God. Trusting him and finding success in being who he wants us to be. Stepping into the calling that he has for us in this beautiful season. God can use us right where we are, I pray that you will keep that in mind and use the gifts and talents that he's given you to serve him well. Come back in two weeks. I'm gonna have a solo episode again. It's been a while since I've recorded one of those and I'm just wanna share with you some thoughts and ideas that have been really on my heart lately. Kind of some reminders about how we can really make an impact in this season of life, and I think that's really one of the things that God's calling us to. So I look forward to seeing you back here then. Until then, I pray that as you step boldly into this season of retirement, that you engage your faith and you live your more, because retirement is not the end. It's a beginning of a beautiful new relationship with God. Look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks. God bless.